Heh–there’s also the one (in State Fair) that’s the love song to the guy’s hog. (Not motorcycle, his pig, Blue Boy). It’s a love song. Luckily, it’s far too stupid to be creepy: “Friend you’re more than just a friend/Loyal loving to the end/Sweet Hog of mine. Sweet hog of mine/Warm and soft affection lies. In your teeny weeny eyes/Sweet Hog of Mine. Sweet Hog of Mine./When the lengthing shadows fall/You will always hear me call/Soo-eey Soo-eey Soo-eey Sa-oo”)
Doesn’t compare to, say, Anna’s angry rant about the king: “I do not like polygamy/or even mod’rate bigamy/I realize that in your eyes/that clearly makes a prig o’ me/But I am from a civilized land called Wales/Where men like you are kept in county jails!”
Talk about a great character defining number. R&H may have had some stinkers, but when they were on, they were ON.
It’s not so much “torn apart”, it’s that in EVERY musical I can think of with a redemption theme has a moment of redepmption. Either the character fails at his redemption (“Sweeney Todd”–specifically the “Epiphany” scene “They ALL deserve to die!/Tell ya why, Mrs Lovett, tell ya why!”) or DOES something to succeed (Sky lying about taking Sister Sarah to Havana in “Guys and Dolls”, Harold Hill coming clean with Winthrop to prevent him from going back in his shell in “Music Man”). You have to DO something to get redemption, even if it doesn’t make sense much . Panache45 makes a good argument–but I’m not sure how stealing a star and then hitting her somehow makes her join the community…
1: Steal a star, try to give it to your daughter. Hit her when she rejects it.
2: ???
3: She’s accepted by the town.
It’s the old-guy (the Starkeeper/Doctor)'s speech that redeems everyone: the “Don’t take credit for your parent’s successes (looks at the snotty Snow kids) or blame yourself for your parents failures (looks at Louise).” as the no-longer snotty Snow daughter comes over to Louise and offers her hand.
How does stealing a star and then hitting your daughter redeem BILLY? If Billy had given the “Don’t take credit” speech, yeah, that’d be redemption-worthy. If he’d even SAID something to Louise that makes her accept the speech, that’d be enough. (“I knew your dad, kid–he wouldn’ta wanted ya to make the same mistakes he did–he was always a loner*, kept his distance from everyone and other than your mom never had any friends–if he’da had them, maybe he wouldn’t have been so weak”–something like that)
*Remember, for Hammerstein, it was always all about “community”.
Carousel is forever soured for me from my experiences in a production of it years ago. I had to really search my memory for some of the things mentioned here. I couldn’t even remember Billy hitting his daughter!
Wow, same feeling here. I played in Pit Orchestra for Carousel in 1995, and thus saw it performed about 300 times, and I’m having a hard time remembering what the heck even happened, aside from Billy dying (he got shot by some guy he was trying to rob, right?) and then climbing up to heaven at the end. Oh, and the god awful This Was A Real Nice Clambake song. It took a lot of thinking back to even remember that he hits his grown daughter (after she performs the ballet waltz, aka the best song in the show!) after she gets freaked out and won’t take the star. There’s a moment of “oops I made things even worse”, and then the town sings You’ll Never Walk Alone, his daughter smiles and BOOM Billy gets into heaven. WTF indeed…
Did this thread get started because Carousel appeared in the Benjamin Button movie which opened today?
If we are talking about bad songs in musicals–I have to go with R&Hart’s The Boys From Syracuse with the song–You have Cast Your Shadow on the Sea–which sounds like a vocal exercise for the drowning. (The show’s “The Shortest Day of the Year…” is also a close runner-up.
For years, my biggest question about Carousel has not been about the music (which is, at best, mediocre), but rather about what R&H were smoking when they agreed to do it. It’s been years since I read Liliom, but my lingering impression is that it’s so relentlessly downbeat that I would be hard pressed to think of a less likely candidate for a musical adaptation. Except maybe if someone decided to plunk a chorus line into the middle of No Exit. . . .
Incidentally, I read somewhere that before Lerner and Loewe beat them to it, R&H were considering a musical based on Pygmalion. Made me wonder what they would come up with for the obligatory Wise Woman™ solo — perhaps Mrs Higgins exhorting Eliza not to throw the slippers?
As I said in my previous post, “Liliom” is not necessarily a poor candidate for musical treatment. It’s just that it would’ve more appropriate for somebody like Brecht and Weill. R&H doing it is like if Norman Rockwell decided to do an Expressionist painting.
I wasn’t really being critical of what you said because I mostly agreed with it.
You are right that “Carousel” is a confused mess of a play (albeit an interesting confused mess of a play). As for R&H having a less-than-admirable character as the lead in an American musical, while it certainly was far from the norm in 1945, it was not unprecedented since Rodgers himself broke ground several years before with Pal Joey (which he co-wrote with Lorenz Hart).
While I can see THAT, seeing the R&H version was a WTF? experience. It was like they wanted to do “edgy” but had no idea what it meant. It can be funny when people do that, but this was just sad. ESPECIALLY with McCrae in the male lead. He may never have been cast worse, since he could only do likable oaf.
I’m quite surprised at the number of people saying they hate the score. It’s my favorite all-around R&H score, and one of my favorite musical scores ever. I’ve also always read that it was Rodgers favorite of his own scores.
That said, I can’t say that many of the individual songs rank as my favorite R&H songs, per se. Not sure how or why, but the score as a whole holds up better for me than its isolated parts. (Though I must agree with the “Clambake” haters – terrible number.)
I’ve seen two different non-musical film versions of the source story, Liliom, both of which, frankly, “work better” than the musical. They’re worth tracking down if you’re curious.
No, held at gunpoint by some guy he was going to rob but who turns out to be armed, Billy throws himself on his own knife rather than wait for the law.
"Incidentally, I read somewhere that before Lerner and Loewe beat them to it, R&H were considering a musical based on Pygmalion. Made me wonder what they would come up with for the obligatory Wise Woman™ solo — perhaps Mrs Higgins exhorting Eliza not to throw the slippers?
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Rumor has it that L & L wrote a solo for Eliza before she goes to the ball but decided it didn’t work. So, they put it into Gigi. “Say a Prayer For Me Tonight” has some interesting lyrics for a French girl–Pray I’ll be Wellington not Bonaparte… more suited to Eliza. I think there is a song in Sound of Music that was written for another show by R & H.
There’s a point being missed here that’s inherent to the message of the show. The script makes it clear that Billy only hit her once in the heat of arguement. That is stated plainly in the dialogue. That doesn’t excuse what he did and in all probability had he lived longer he probably would have become a repeated wife-beater - but they’re making a point that the entire town immediately condemns him and starts calling him a wife beater after a single incident - showing that he’s a condemned man to them no matter what he does (and this trickles down to the way they treat his daughter.)
Julie’s statement about being hit about a hit not hurting is how she justifys him having hit her and it being okay, the same way many people who have been abused rationalize the situation. The reason Billy hits his daughter Louise is that to that point in the show (while it’s been 15 years on Earth since Billy died for him it has only been 15 minutes) he hasn’t learned anything. But when he hits his daughter, in a way hitting a part of himself, and he sees her reaction that is what makes him, so to speak, see the error of his ways - of how he is the reason her life has been what it has. Louise has a strong inner character - she’d have to putting up with 15 years of verbal abuse from the town. Billy’s whispered encouragement is just the last little push she needs to fully believe in herself.
The Starkeeper and Brother Joshua both have lines that condemn Billy for basically failing as a human and while it is a bit vague, their dialogue does indicate that Billy can merely hope to not go to hell - but to maybe enter heaven through the back gates (not sure if that’s meant to be an illusion to purgatory or limbo or not.) It’s certainly an awkward moment that the male lead’s character arc is completed after he’s dead, but it is still there. Once he realizes his mistakes and encourages Louise, he is finally able to say “I love you” to Julie, mirroring her inability to say it until he was dead due to her own stunted emotional growth.
Several of the points the show is trying to make (and I do agree that if badly directed or performed, these can be completely lost) are a) society tends to jump to conclussions without proof that can damage lives b) no matter how much you may love someone, if you’re not both emotionally mature it’s going to be a struggle c)the sins of the parent are revisited upon their children d) getting married just to be a married is a bad idea e) marriage needs to be equal to work f) Wrong doings regardless of noble intentions are still wrong among others.
The story of Carousel reminds me of the saying, “He’s my man, and I love him, no matter what.” Also, I think it was early in the development of modern musical theater, and authors, composers and producers were experimenting. Besides, just how logical are Mozart operas?
I speak from the standpoint of someone who has performed in, and/or directed the music for, all of the shows in the OP, except Fiorello, and that remains one of my favorite musicals, ever. “In a little tin box, a little tin box, it’s a cushion for life’s rude shocks…”